1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the mixing of karaoke music using electronic musical sound sources like synthesizers according to the MIDI Standards. The present invention particularly relates to an authoring apparatus which synchronizes the reproduction of karaoke music of a song, the presentation of the song's words(lyrics) on a screen, the presentation of associated images, and the presentation of the title of the karaoke music and the like.
2) Description of the Prior Art
It is known that a karaoke music is generated by electronic musical sound sources according to the MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) Standards. (Karaoke is the practice of singing to recorded backing music as a form of relaxation, and karaoke music is that recorded backing music. In most cases, a monitor screen is also provided which presents the words of a song so that a singer may sing the song in synchronism with the backing music while watching words on the monitor screen, and the words are usually presented line by line with associated video images also presented in the background on the monitor screen). Such an example is disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. Hei-3-240385. Karaoke generally requires not only the synchronization between the reproduction of a backing music and the display of video images, but also the synchronization between the reproduction of the backing music/images and the display of words. Thus, a karaoke machine using electronic musical sound sources also requires the synchronization between these factors. Conventional techniques to synchronize the display of words and images are disclosed by Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. Hei-3-241566 and Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. Hei-3-241581.
The synchronization between the reproduction of music and the presentation of background video images and associated words is also assured in widely used karaoke machines with optical disk. The synchronization operation is performed in an authoring action in which studio crew combine words with a music and video images being reproduced using a slide volume control in a studio at the final stage of the production of a karaoke music and associated picture.
In such a conventional karaoke machine using electronic musical sound sources, the synchronization of words is left to the responsibility of a reproducing machine. No clear disclosure has been provided to detail what authoring technique is used to insert a synchronization signal into control data when the control data according to the MIDI Standard is generated.
In the karaoke machine not using electronic musical sound sources, studio crew control the flow of words' listening to a reproduced music while watching background video images to combine them all. In this case, studio crew require a high standard of skill to do authoring, and thus untrained crew cannot do the same job. This means that specially trained personnel are used, and the efficiency in authoring is particularly poor.